Each year, as we near December, thousands of ovens light up around the country as bakers gear up for one of America’s favorite holiday pastimes: the cookie swap. Cookie swaps aren’t only festive — and one of the most delicious ways to build community — they are also enormously efficient, multiplying your baking efforts and leaving you with dozens of holiday classics to enjoy, gift, and serve all season long. 

Crafting the perfect holiday cookie platter can be as high stakes as gift giving. Luckily, we’ve come up with the perfect selection for your dessert table this year. This slate of six new holiday cookie recipes covers a range of flavors (from chocolate to pistachio to peppermint!) and techniques (easy drop cookies, simplified sandwich cookies, swirled shortbreads, and more) to keep things fresh, festive, and of course, delicious.  

When we first published this list of holiday and Christmas cookies a few years ago, our goal was to pull all of our top cookie recipes together in one place. We popped back in a few times to update the recipes, adding new favorites and trimming duplicates that didn’t feel like they added much. But we kept thinking about holiday cookies. (Hey, it’s our job!). And we realized: All holiday cookies are not the same. There are the classics, of course. The creative new takes. And the cookies that are popular year-round, but still find their way onto the holiday table.

Yes, Thanksgiving is a pie-centric holiday. But what if you don’t like pie? Or maybe you just don’t want it. Either way, we’ve got lots of other Thanksgiving desserts, from spiced pumpkin cupcakes to sugary apple cobblers, plus plenty of autumnal cakes. And if you want to make one of these desserts plus a pie, check out our best Thanksgiving pie recipes, too.

November is a big month for bakers as we prep for our Olympics — also known as Thanksgiving. But there’s still plenty to bake beyond the big day! Whether you’re hosting dinner for a smaller household, want to change up your pie routine, or just need the perfect fall dessert, we’ve got the recipes you need to bake this November.

On a recent episode of our podcast, Things Bakers Know, I mentioned how I lived off local sweet potatoes when I went to school in North Carolina. (I had a crate of them stashed in my closet, true story.) What I didn’t mention are all the things I baked with them.

In recent years, an interesting movement has been happening for some people who experience gluten sensitivity: They avoid wheat, except in the case of sourdough bread. 

You picked up a bag of bread flour to make fluffy Japanese Milk Bread or Do-Nothing Sourdough Bread. But now you may be wondering: What do I do with the rest of the bag? Can I use bread flour to bake anything else?

Yesterday, my 14-year-old son made his first quesadilla, starting with a homemade tortilla. A couple of weeks before that, his 12-year-old brother carefully piped frosting onto a giant layer cake bound for his grandfather’s 80th birthday. I texted my coworkers: It’s happening. My kids are becoming bakers. 

When your pie recipe calls for prebaking the crust — what do you do?  

A good pumpkin pie is delicate, featuring a just-set filling that’s smooth, creamy, and even a little jiggly. And it’s that exact quality that makes these pies so tricky to transport.

What do jobs, school, sports practices, and commuting have in common? They all prevent us from baking as much or as often as we’d like. But when we do get the chance, we want a slam-dunk recipe — or 15. Here’s a list of our favorite fall recipes we’ll be making this month: from cinnamon-stuffed muffins to spooky fudge brownies to a swirled milk bread studded with maple and walnuts. 

You used all the right ingredients, your oven is perfectly calibrated, and you baked your cookies for the exact amount of time the recipe directed. But their texture is all wrong. What happened? 

Few baking disappointments sting more than pulling a tray of cookies from the oven and realizing the bottoms are darker, tougher, and drier than you intended. The tops may look just right, but underneath, they’ve taken on too much heat.